Read The Down Home Zombie Blues for Free Online Page B

know how he’d managed to get it, but he could keep the G-1, though she’d face the captain’s hell-wrath for losing it. She tried to jerk the unit out of his hand, but he wouldn’t let go.
    “You. Don’t. Understand,” she said through gritted teeth. “No time!”
    “Explain,” he demanded, the pistol aimed at her head. A pistol—thanks to her—he knew how to use. She still had her other G-1 but knew she’d be dead if she made a reach for it.
    Her scanner emitted one shrill beep. Portal forming. Another zombie honing in on the unit.
    She had no choice. Death by zombie, death by laser, or…
    She jabbed the transcomm on the side of her utility belt with her right elbow and issued a terse order into her mouth mike in Alarsh. “Emergency transit. Engage PMaT. Two life forms. Now!”
    The nil-tech world called Earth blinked from her sight.

3
    The first thing Theo realized was that he itched all over. The second was that somehow—in the blink of an eye—he’d gone from a horror movie in his backyard to the middle of a
Star Trek
set. He was on a platform facing a bank of computer screens and a short console. In front of the console were a group people in green-and-black uniforms. Two were clearly not human. One looked a bit like a short, curly-haired Wookiee. No, that was
Star Wars
. Wrong movie. The other was…His vision hazed. His head spun. His body tingled relentlessly. He knew with sickening certainty he was moments from passing out.
    Not good.
    He locked his knees. Someone grabbed his arm, steadying him as he sucked in a deep breath. Something slid through his fingers. The laptop. He turned, then let it go, because now, in the bright lights of this science-fiction movie set, he couldn’t stop looking at the woman who took the laptop from him.
    He saw her—or thought he saw her—in the uneven glare of the porch light over his back door. A teenager in some mismatched slam-jam outfit running toward him, hollering. He thought she was in trouble, needed help. The whole neighborhood knew he was a cop. He intended to grab her, try to calm her down, when suddenly two beams of light burst from her hands.
    That’s when he noticed the big green glowing hole in the night sky about twenty feet away.
    Seconds later she was braced against him—her lithe, muscular body draped in odd equipment. Some kind of lens covered her right eye. He quickly discarded his initial impressions of teen and slam-jam. She looked like a member of a futuristic SWAT team.
    And then he saw the—what had she called it? The zombie.
Cristos!
Worse than any images of the
Kalikantzri
from his childhood Christmases.
    He went on autopilot after that. He hazily remembered damning himself for not putting his hip holster and gun back on immediately after changing his coffee-soaked clothes. He somewhat more clearly remembered taking some kind of gun from her. But mostly he focused on that towering abomination with glowing eyes and metal skin covered with crawling, writhing worms.
    Understandably, he wasn’t focused on her, or what she looked like. Until now. She was sweaty, grass-stained, dirt-streaked. And she was unequivocally gorgeous. Exotic. Medium height, five foot five or so, and slender but not skinny. Her skin color reminded him of honey. She had muscles. She had curves. Nice curves. His gaze traveled up from her cleavage to a heart-shaped face with dark-lashed eyes. And lips any Hollywood actress would pay big bucks to own. Lips he’d love to—
    He blinked, hard.
Slow down, Petrakos. Slow down.
    Sounds, voices filtered back into his ears, making him aware he’d been temporarily deafened. A tremor shook his body, subsiding as quickly as it had appeared. He was suffering from disorientation, delusions. Too many nights on call out resulting in lack of sleep, that’s all this was. In a moment it would all disappear and he’d be back in his kitchen, popping the top off a nice cold can of orange soda he’d left standing on the counter. He